Baker watched Vane and listened silently to the conversation with Commander Powell. Lieutenant Williams emerged from the terrace with two more flying harnesses, which he handed to Vane and Baker.
“Do you scan, Derek?” Powell asked.
“Yessir.” Vane struggled with the harness, then zipped it up and jumped up and down twice. Williams helped Baker into his. The harness consisted of a firm fiberglass corset similar to those of recreational jet packs on Earth. The stiff rigging from shoulder to buttocks prevented side-to-side hip movement that could lead to a shifting center of thrust and wild gyrations. The rocket gymbals could be controlled either by a powerglove or by remote, eliminating the need for bulky armatures and a separate mounting for the exhaust nozzles.
“They wanted his ship, too,” Powell continued, “but they’re out of deals on that account. Seems the ship took it upon itself to transfer out when the other ships transferred in.”
“Shall I escort Baker to the airlock?” the Pharmaceutic asked.
“Negative. They don’t plan to let us live. Nobody sends a destroyer class ship at fifty gees to pick up a prisoner. Especially when they know he can survive a transfer. They’d just pop in, grab him and take him back in one of those fighters.”
“Why didn’t the destroyer transfer out here?”
“Derek-I don’t know.” His tone of voice altered to that of a commander of men and he said, “Attention all hands. Scramble Red. Don pressure suits and weaponry from nearest available lockers. Power’s off, so go to any battle station, even if it’s not yours. Stand by for further orders. ETA for destroyer is approximately Twenty-One Thirty. Stay at condition Red until further notice.” His voice softened a bit, as though he were speaking only to Vane and Baker. “Get Baker to ComStat, Derek.”
“Here,” Williams said, attaching a nylon cord between his waist and Baker’s. “In case you can’t get the hang of it.” He connected a ribbon cable from the control box on his chest to the one on Baker’s. “We’ll fly synched, so just relax and don’t panic.”
Starting up his engine, Baker wrinkled his nose at the sharp odor of half-burned hydrogen that assaulted his senses for an instant. “Shove off,” the lieutenant said. He and Baker kicked off together.
Though Earthborn, Baker knew from vacations to resort habitats that the terms “artificial gravity” and “centrifugal force” were both misnomers for what held people, buildings, and loose items to the inside of the Bernal sphere-or any other rotating space station. The spin of the sphere caused everything touching it-including the atmosphere-to move in the direction of the spin, tangential to the axis. Someone standing on the outside of the sphere would be flung into space as if thrown from a slingshot. On the inside, however, such tangential motion met a firm obstacle: the inside surface of the sphere. It was this constant motion outward that caused the illusion of gravity.
Since it was not gravity, though, actions impossible on a planet were possible on a habitat. Running spinward along a latitude increased one’s tangential velocity, thus increased ones’ “weight.” Running anti-spinward decreased one’s velocity with relation to the sphere and decreased one’s weight. It was difficult to run fast enough to become weightless, generally, because the air mass moved spinward with the habitat and the relative wind one encountered running anti-spinward was enough to blow one back to the deck. That’s where the jet packs proved useful. The constant thrust was enough to combat the wind, allowing the trained pilot to jet from point to point in the sphere as if he were in freefall around Earth.
Doing so in practice was as difficult as it sounded in theory. If one tried to fly across latitudes, not only did the Coriolis effect throw one off course, but the motion of the habitat in its Earth orbit contributed to further navigational error. Before the war, it was a simple matter to link all the flying harnesses to a central navigational computer.
“What do you mean, flying linked?” Baker asked over the engines’ whine.
“NavCom broke down years ago,” Williams shouted. “We all fly by the seat of our pants here-or, more accurately, by the back of our shoulder blades.” He turned the jet up to full power, Baker’s jet mimicking the increase exactly. They flew together with the ribbon cable between them never growing more than moderately taut.
The shifting vectors of acceleration and Coriolis effect, imperceptible while walking up toward the axis, played a nauseating trick on Baker’s inner ear as the four men flew toward the battle station suspended in the center of the sphere. He closed his eyes and waited out the feeling.
You’re a pilot. You’re used to it. You’re just in someone else’s body who isn’t. It’s so strange to close my eyes and be simply a passenger, to let someone else be the pilot.
“Damage control reports all blast holes sealed,” someone buzzed in his earphone. “Full integrity restored.” He opened his eyes in time to see the cylinder of ComStat fill his vision. They sped through a hatchway and reversed engines.
“My compliments,” Baker said, about to step out of the harness. Williams nodded, disconnected the rope and wires, and waved his hand.
“Don’t desuit. Jet packs stay on at battle stations.”
“Store the fuel bottles in the safety boxes.” Vane took Baker’s and put them with the others in a thick padded box. Baker noticed that the four of them had slowly settled to the alleged floor of the building. He took one step and floated upward. The core rotated with the sphere, so it imparted its own minuscule tangential motion to everything inside, though being in it was as close to being weightless as was humanly perceptible.
“Baker’s inside, sir,” Vane said into his headpiece.
“Bring him up,” came the reply.
“They want you badly, Vir-Jord. They’ve risked a dozen Valli fighters and a deep thrust destroyer.” Powell looked Baker in the eye. Baker nodded while he scanned the room. Viewscrims covered the inside surface of the axis core of ComStat. Down the middle of the shaft hung a non-rotating cylinder composed entirely of computer consoles. A score of men surrounded the cylinder, facing outward, operating the controls that extended around them, watching their viewscrims. Most of the flickering, shifting light in the station issued from the scrims.
Baker looked at closeups of the fighters. Both he and Powell floated near one end of the cylinder, the commander securely attached to Fadeaway’s hotseat. Baker hung behind him, observing. Powell punched a couple of buttons that had turned red.
“This is no moonwalk-it’s the Infernal’s final assault. They plan to kill everyone on board. That’s fourteen hundred and twelve men, eighty-six women, thirty-two kids.”
“No reason for them to.”
Powell rubbed the bridge of his nose and snorted. “No reason for them not to. No witnesses in near orbit. They blew out our comm lasers when they arrived. And they probably want to test their new weaponry. Ever hear of the Earthside town Guernica? Or Baghdad?”
Baker shook his head. “What are they testing it for? Earth is crippled and practically dead.”
Powell shrugged, shouted a terse command into his head-set, then sighed. “You weren’t here during the War. The hatred runs insanely deep, and it’s not been softened by the years. Any war of secession creates long-lasting anger.” He gazed at the advancing warship. “There are still some Southerners that resent losing the Civil War. There are still some Americans that hate the British for the actions of King George the Third.”
“Who?”
Powell made a tired half-chuckle. “Old soldiers have little to do but read about old wars.” He slapped an array of switches from orange to red. “The ones that try to fight the old wars, though, they become dead soldiers.”
“Ten seconds, sir.”
Powell’s gaze turned toward the man who spoke, then glanced at the ship’s clock.
“Battle station red.” At his command, sirens whooped, scrims switched images, men exchanged positions. “Latest ETA for destroyer is thirty-two minutes. Prepare to repel boarders.”
“No fighter ships of your own?”
“This place didn’t have any, we couldn’t build any. We’ll have to wait until they come onboard.”
“My lifeboat has a meteor laser. I could try to pick a couple-”
“You stay here. Like it or not, you’re our insurance policy. We need your help in this, so consider yourself a hostage.” Powell turned to face Baker. “They won’t kill us until they have you. Perhaps we can take a few of them with us.”
Baker silently watched the scrims while the minutes fell away, marked only by the calm voice of an ensign noting its passage. The Valli fighters surrounding the sphere did nothing. “Ten minutes. Destroyer within attack radius.”
“Final weapons check.”
Baker asked, “What weapons?”
Without breaking his concentration on the master computer, Powell replied, “Laser rifles, gloves, even a few automatic pistols and old machine guns. Ever try to correct for Coriolis while firing inside a Bernal? Good fun.”
“This is a suicide fight.”
Powell kept his gaze on the scrims. “Don’t you think my men know that?”
“I’m the reason they’re going to die.” Baker pushed away from the command seat. “You could have spaced me and told them I wasn’t here-”
“They’d have looked for you anyway. We were doomed the moment you appeared on radar.”
“You should have blasted me then.”
“You’re probably right. We’re in for it now, though, so we fight.”
“Eight minutes. We have visual.” A telescopic view of the destroyer appeared on several scrims. Its nuclear engines no longer glowed blue-white and its shape could clearly be seen. It rotated about into attack position, an off-white armored slab a hundred meters wide and two hundred long. A battery of lasers and missile launchers crested its fore end, clustered like a giant child’s overflowing carton of lethal toys. The bottom third of the destroyer bulged elliptically to hold its nuclear fuel.
“Go to internal oxygen,” a disembodied voice commanded.
“How about us?” Baker asked, watching a scrim of men and women in pressure suits busily adjusting their air flows.
“We’re airlocked,” Powell replied simply. “If the integrity here fails, we’ve lost anyway.”
“I’m not dying here.” Baker floated in front of Powell. One arm reached out and pulled him back into place.
“Relax-you’re as safe here as anywhere. If not”-Powell punched a few buttons and pointed-“There-on the center right scrim. Your lifeboat. In three minutes you can be in there and ready to transfer out, if you have any idea where Circus is.
First, though-” He punched another button and threw a series of switches. A bank of lights glowed green around him.
“This is Commander Norman Powell of Fadeaway acknowledging receipt of your request. Virgil Grissom Kinney sits behind me. We are prepared to repel your attack. We-”
Something thundered throughout the habitat. Even ComStat vibrated.
“Simultaneous Valli bombardment from all sides,” a voice called out. “Zero integrity on sphere. Atmosphere draining.” Other voices joined in.
“Twenty millimeters pressure. Fifteen.”
“Four minutes.”
“Ten millimeters. Five.”
“Twenty-four blast holes each eight to ten meters-”
A dozen light arrays simultaneously blazed red.
“Zero pressure in main sphere.”
“How many men lost?”
“Look!” a shocked old voice cried. “They’re fighting outside!” Scrims lit up with the view of troops, sucked out through the blast holes by the voiding atmosphere, still ready for battle. Half of them were dead; the survivors-flung into space toward doom-unleashed their fire against the Valli fighters and the approaching destroyer.
“It’s pointless! They can’t harm anything from there.”
“ ‘The brave may fall, but never yield,’ Jord.” Powell opened the hatch to the airlock. “Now you know why I kept you up here. They wouldn’t blast ComStat knowing you’d probably be inside. They’ll have to board and storm to capture you.” He scanned an array of scrims. “Now. Get to your boat. There’s a suit in the lock.”
“It’ll take me too long to-”
“We’ll hold them off. Get out now!”
Baker kicked down the tubeway into the lock and slammed the hatch. He removed his jet pack, slipped on the bulky suit as fast as possible and cycled the atmosphere. From the safety box he seized a fuel bottle.
“Boarding ships launched from destroyer.”
“How many men left?” Powell’s voice asked, sharp and calm on Baker’s headset.
“Telemetry received on seven hundred fifty-three still inside, sir.”
Baker tightened the jet harness and kicked out toward the shuttle bay. He fired up the engine and tried not to look anywhere but along his direction of flight.
“Deploy them evenly around the blast holes,” Powell said, “until we’re sure which ones the ships will use.”
Baker ignored the ensuing spate of orders and troop movements. He glanced down just once to see ant-people running up to black, pool-sized holes inside the sphere, above and below him. Buildings had been toppled, plants uprooted. Debris lay spiraled toward the holes as if toward a drain, turned clockwise on one side of the equator, counter-clockwise on the other, looser twists in the higher latitudes, tighter ones in the middle.
Baker rocketed along the axis toward the docking bay.
“Reroute companies Bravo, Echo, and Oscar to hole one-thirty west, forty north. The first ship’s rammed us there.”
Baker looked around. Above and behind him, he saw the blunt nose of a boarding craft jammed into the blast hole. Laser fire from the craft attempted to clear the area, but there were too many places for the defenders to hide. Suddenly, hatches sprung open and armed troops swarmed outward. Brilliant points of light flared against their armor. Some fell. The others walked over them, firing indiscriminate laser fusillades.
From behind a broken tree, a sphere of blue gunsmoke blew outward and an invader several meters away flew backward against the ship’s hull as though hit by a meteor. His pressure suit exploded, boiling his lifeblood into the airless void.
Baker turned away from the upside-down scene in time to see the south pole of the sphere speeding toward him. He reversed and cut his engines just before reaching the hatch-way. A woman motioned to him, pointing toward a corridor; then she turned to join the fighting as soon as he had safely passed.
Hand-over-hand he pulled along the weightless passage. He felt the rumble of a another boarding craft ramming into Fadeaway.
What now? He turned the corner of the access shaft to the docking bay and continued along. I have to die again to get away from death? Is fake or real better? And where to? Circus is gone somewhere-
Yanking his way into the docking bay, he sealed the pressure doors with one hand and muscled toward the shuttle.
They’d see the ship if I move it out of the docking bay. The shuttle’s doors responded to his touch. I’ve got to transfer from inside.
Something reverberated throughout the bay. The airlock bulkhead bent inward as if hit by a battering ram. He cycled the pressurizer and removed his helmet.
“Can you take verbal commands?” he shouted to the boat’s computer. Lights turned green. The word YES appeared on a viewscrim. Strapping in, he spoke a series of carefully worded orders, all the time watching the docking bay doors; a bright point of light appeared at one corner and began to trace an outline.
“Do you understand these orders?”
YES.
Baker poised his finger over the transfer button.
“Come on. What are you waiting for?” They’re cutting the hatchway open. Come on.
Baker bit his lip and watched the outer doors slowly bend inward under the light thrust of a boarding craft. The steel plating easily gave way until part of it touched the nose of Baker’s shuttle, pitching it forward. Through the opening hatch of the boarding craft, he saw masks hiding behind the muzzles of laser rifles.
“Come on!” he cried.
WORKING.
“Damn you!” Baker reached the screeching stage as he watched the first few troops float out of the blunted nose of the other ship and cautiously propel toward him, weapons zeroed in on the cockpit. “You goddamned machine! It can’t take that long to figure out. It’s not that hard!” He jerked backward in his seat when the first of the boarding party touched the hood of the shuttle. No. They’ll pick me apart trying to find out why Kinney can survive.
The light under the transfer button glowed. Baker shrieked “Go!” and punched his thumb into it.
Darkness consumed him.
Black, swimming black. I should have stayed. I lay here so limp and unsafe. What if I don’t come back this time? I look scared. The doors! They’re bending in on me. I press beyond them into the shaft so dark and cold. I’m falling and I don’t want to fall. I’ve got to stop falling, got to stop. I’m needed. I’ve got to be needed somewhere-I know it. She’s telling me. Something needs help.
Baker took a heartbeat to realize where he was. His hands shot out for the ship’s controls and frantically punched buttons.
Directly ahead of him, a crater filled his viewing port.
Instead of falling toward it, though, the shuttle rose up and away from the planet’s surface.
The crater shrank. In a few moments, Baker saw the airless limb of the planet Mercury and beyond it the milky glow of the solar corona. The port turned nearly opaque the instant the sun blazed across the glasteel. He looked away by reflex.
I made it! He checked his instrument readouts and smiled. Intrinsic velocity retained. I’m rising into an orbit to accommodate my Earth orbital speed; I’ll be drifting beneath the halo of flak as safely as can be expected. At least it couldn’t hang too close to the surface without becoming meteorites.
“Begin search for Circus Galacticus and stand watch for other spacecraft.” Leaning back in the seat as best he could in freefall, he smiled wider.
The shuttle did not carry enough fuel to make it from the outer region of Mercury’s flak barrier to the inner orbits if he had transferred there. The flak could not reach to the surface, he suspected, and all he had to do was appear on the anti-revolutionward side of Mercury and let his Earth velocity take him away from the surface.
Something tapped at the ship’s hull once. Baker smiled after it happened again a few moments later. There it is. I was right about the flak. Starting to encounter it.
Baker stopped in the middle of his thoughts and froze.
What flak?
Another piece of debris hit the shuttle.
Where did I hear about flak? Why should I even have suspected…
He began to shake. Think, idiot. Where? The planet’s are at superior conjunction. No direct observation possible. But Circus transferred to sixty degrees above the ecliptic to- But I didn’t know that.
He swallowed with great difficulty. The back of his throat scraped like leather against brick.
That’s not my memory. It didn’t happen to me. I didn’t find it out. Someone else. Kinney!
He switched on a scrim to stare himself in the face.
“Who are you? Which mind is yours?” The face in the scrim mimicked his movements but did not answer. It stared back at him with equal fear and incomprehension.
“Who, God damn you? Who?”
❂
When Circus Galacticus rose slowly over Mercury’s horizon, Baker plotted a rendezvous course without surprise. His days-old beard scraped at the collar of his pressure suit. His bristly scalp itched.
Why did I even think of Mercury? Even suspect that Circus’d be here? Dee is here, frozen somewhere below. Kinney must know it. That’s why he brought-
He brought me… here. His body, his brain, he’s running it all and I’m just a passenger who gets to drive once in a while along the same road.
Now I can’t be sure. Can’t think anything I do isn’t controlled by him. I’m not even here really. Just a few milliliters of-juice-that got realigned into someone else’s circuitry, a nothing man, a nowhere man, a never man with a never mind.
“What is your name?” Circus’s computer radioed.
“I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know. I don’t. No.” He grabbed at his head, then reached down for the attitude controls. “Jord. I am Jord Baker.” I am Jord Baker. All inside it’s like Jord. I die the way Jord dies. I’m here-
“Prepare to dock,” the computer said, opening the docking bay doors on its side. Baker’s hands deftly maneuvered the shuttle toward the glowing square on the dark side of the spacecraft. He hardly noticed his piloting.
I’m here and thinking and acting. I can tighten this thigh muscle, blink that eye, grind my teeth. I’m on the circuitry. If I could somehow deprogram. Deprogram. Dee. Program.
Pogrom. Pour grumbling, crumbling Kinney out of his own body. She’ll do it. Do it double-time. Triple Trine.
His hands tightened on the controls. “Ready to dock…” Looking for the first time at what he had been seeing, he realized that he had already docked the shuttle. Behind him, the outer doors slid shut and air cycled in.
Unstrapping with one swift motion, Baker kicked out of the chair, pounded a hand against the emergency hatch release and sailed into the docking bay.
“Begin immediate search for the cryonic preservation unit on the surface.” He had to shout over the hiss of air still filling the bay. His ears rang. Grabbing hold of a handrail, he yanked toward the hatch.
“Searching,” the computer replied. “Have you not noticed the large object to your left?”
Baker turned and started. A spacecraft nearly double the size of the shuttle lay fast to the repair section. Baker had indeed not noticed it.
“Sure. That’s the ship you disabled at flameout. How’d you get it?” He floated over to it. The arcing slash of a laser beam had left a deep, uneven valley in the ship’s flattened-cone hull from its blunt nose to topside aft.
“I transferred out ahead of it when Fadeaway came under attack. I matched velocities and picked it up, then transferred to the outer region of Mercury’s flak barrier and moved slowly into a low orbit. Your method of arrival was much more elegant.”
“Have you found it yet? Delia’s redoubt?”
“No. Not yet. Please-examine the fighter.”
Baker pulled topside to check out the cockpit.
“As you’ll notice, all controls were severed by the laser, but the cockpit remained intact.”
“There’s a body in there!”
“The pilot. You will also note that the ship possesses no radio or maser equipment or, in fact, any ship-to-ship or ship-to-base communications of-”
“Why didn’t you remove the body?”
“I was waiting for you to take a look at it along with me.”
“Forget it.” He slid away from the viewing port.
“Jord,” the computer said in the softest voice it could synthesize. “The pilot is dead.”
“You need a billion miles of neurons to figure that out?”
“He was dead while piloting the fighter. He has been dead for weeks.”
Baker felt around the collar of his pressure suit for a water spigot and found none. He tried to swallow.
“Let me change.” He slipped out of the bulky pressure suit and into one of Circus’s skintights. He donned the headset with its vidlink to the computer and pushed off toward the fighter cockpit.
“Straight,” he said around the mouthpiece. “When we’re done, open the bay to space and I’ll stay here until I’m certain that any contamination on me is dead.”
He found no entrance hatch. After half an hour of thorough searching, he said, “Not even through the viewports-they’re sealed tight. Did they nail him inside here for good?”
“As I suspected-he was dead from the day he was put into the ship.”
“Yeah? Put in by whom?”
“I had a robot bring some tools down. Use the cutting torch to open the top viewport. You can squeeze in through there.”
“Have you found it yet?” Baker asked, halfway through cutting the glasteel with an ultraviolet laser.
“No. I am scanning polar areas where solar panels could receive continuous light. I will alert you when I have detected something.”
A piece of slag drifted onto the control panel inside the fighter as the section of glasteel gave way. It sizzled for a moment, then crystallized. Grabbing the coolest edge of the piece, Baker pulled it aside and left it floating nearby. He peered inside.
The corpse peered back at him.
Its eyes gazed straight forward, unglazed, clear. Every few seconds a pair of tiny tubes expelled a mist that spread over the sclera and either evaporated or was absorbed. Baker could not tell which.
It was his first indication, however, that the ship still functioned. He maneuvered inside. “Did you know the ship was still running?” he asked.
“Yes. All its battle systems are inoperative, though, and it has lost all conning capability; in fact, the only functional system is the one surrounding the corpse, which takes up very little volume and is separate from the other ship systems.”
I can feel the death pulsating inside that thing. All those tubes like long, fat worms hanging from his neck and thighs. Pumping something gray and thick through its gray body. Out of his dead head staring so clear-I didn’t used to think like this. What’s happening to me?
“Have you found it yet?” he asked.
“Negative. Pan left-I want to look at those contact bundles.”
Baker turned his head.
The eyes of the corpse moved to follow.
They returned to their forward stare as Baker shifted back to examine the body more closely.
A line of drool appeared at the corner of the corpse’s mouth and slowly accumulated until it broke free, a tiny sphere that drifted until it adhered to Baker’s pressure suit.
“There are a series of electrodes,” the computer said, “terminating in the frontal lobes, the parietal and occipital lobes, at the temporal lobes, the cerebellum and the medulla oblongata.”
Baker nodded. “Brain wave sensors for a dead man?”
“The hookups seem to be for remote control of the body.”
Baker frowned. “Remote from where? You said there was no communication equipment. Somewhere in the ship, maybe? An autonomous onboard computer?”
The corpse inhaled.
The dry, wheezing sound rasped in Baker’s headphones. He threw his arms back, crying out when they thudded against the confines of the tiny cockpit.
“Jesus! Did you hear that?” It’s still alive!
“Registered. The corpse has no need to breathe. It is kept alive-about as alive as the irreversibly comatose-by the life support tubing.”
Life support, hell. That thing is dead, yet it’s groaning and rattling like some great shuddering air sack-
“Kinney,” the corpse wheezed in a dry, creaking monotone.
Kinney! It’s always Kinney. Now the dead have come back and they call him instead of me and I don’t want to go but they’ll take me because I’m in his body…
Calm. Calm down. It’s only a talking corpse…
“Virgil Grissom Kinney.”
Just a dead body that’s controlled from somewhere…
Baker switched on his suit’s outer speakers and said, “This is… Kinney.”
“I’ve heard your computer’s half of the conversation over its speaker.” The eyes slowly turned toward the vidcam. The corpse’s s lips did not move when it spoke. Baker looked below the body’s chin to see a small speaker grill protruding from above the trachea. Its mouth hung open partway, another droplet of saliva accumulating near the tip of its brown, immobile tongue. “It’s nice to hear you, too.” Its speech sounded normal enough, though artificial.
“Who are you?” the computer asked.
“You let the machine ask questions?” the dead man said, turning his eyes to stare at Baker.
“Answer it,” Baker said. He sat on the control console with his legs floating on either side of the seated body. He let them float closer to the sides of the chair. “Who are you?”
“Well,” the voice said, “I’m certainly not this hunk of meat you’re staring at. I’m currently sitting in the war room at- well, never mind. It’s in trans-Plutonian space, though, and that’s all you need to know.”
“What’s your name?”
The corpse blinked. Slowly. A nice touch, Baker thought. “Lev Pokoynik. Call me Lee. And you’re Virgil Gri-”
“Jord Baker. Test pilot for the Brennen Trust.”
The corpse said nothing. It blinked again.
“Your image matches-”
“Plastic surgery,” Baker said, trying to keep a straight face. I wonder how much he’ll swallow. “I took his place on the flight.”
“You…” the croaking voice hesitated. After a moment, it resumed. “We have a Jord Baker listed as dead shortly before Kinney was trained for piloting the Valliardi Transfer.”
“A trick. We switched places. Kinney couldn’t handle the transfer. He flipped out.”
The corpse’s eyebrows wrinkled unevenly. “In the case report of the psychtech in charge, Kinney is listed as having survived…”
“I’m Jord Baker. I can see you can’t read minds, at least not my mind. What does it matter, anyway?”
“Can’t you see?” Some of the mist from the eye moisturizers clung to its lids like tears.
Baker edged closer to the chair. “See what?”
“Can’t you see what we’ve been forced to do simply to use the Valliardi Transfer? The only way to control a ship across lightspeed distances is to link it telepathically with a living being. We tried human pilots-they went crazy and killed themselves. We tried autonomous robot drones-they couldn’t think well enough. So we wire up dead bodies to keep them functioning as remote receptors and pilots, and psychlink them to sensitives here at the base.
“It allowed us to attack your spacecraft. We first estimated your projected flameout point. We narrowed it down to a space one light second or so in radius. We matched our velocities to what we guessed yours would be and transferred out. I had to wait five hours. When the fighter reached normal space, my recontact with it-and my communication-was instantaneous.
“The way I knew the instant of your flameout was through the use of my sensitivity. No, I can’t read minds, but I could tell what you were aware of and vaguely what you felt. This also enabled me and my attack wing to close in on you so tightly.
“You lasered us on re-emergence. That was a good move on your part. I stayed linked to the ship to see if I could transfer back. No such deal. I went off shift, but got called away from a good meal when we lost the fighter from our screens. Do you know how hard it is to re-establish contact with a psych-fighter?”
“No. You want me badly, don’t you?”
“We want to know how you can survive the transfer.”
“I don’t know how or why. I don’t think I want to know. And I have no reason to let you vivisect me to make your war more efficient.”
The voice rose until the little speaker distorted its sounds. “Do you think we’d use it for something as stupid as war? Idiot! The Valliardi Transfer is humanity’s only doorway to the stars. It’s cheap, subjectively instantaneous-”
“Almost.”
“-and so close to freeing us to settle the rest of the galaxy that it’d be a crime against all mankind if you escaped from us.”
The computer interrupted. “Twenty-four ships have just appeared beyond the flak halo. They’re accelerating toward us and will be within laser range in-”
“Get us out! They’re already in Valli range!” Baker’s last word choked in his mouth as everything twisted around him.
Make it stop. I can’t go on with the shrinking and the shoving through into that place of light and the door that never opens for me though I want it to and pray it to. They want me for Kinney. Kill Kinney and I won’t have to die and die and die…
“Hang on,” the computer said. “Deceleration!”
Baker’s legs wrapped tightly around the corpse’s chair, pulling forward to grasp it with his arms. The engine array thundered into power. Metal crushed against metal; the fighter slammed against the rear bulkhead to crash partially through the plating. The force of the fall threw Baker loose. His fingers dragged at the tubes and wires connected to the dead pilot, tearing them free. The body slammed atop him in the corner of the fighter; gray fluid spattered across his goggles. They had not fallen far, but the acceleration made it feel worse.
“Status!” he cried into the mouthpiece, pushing the stiff corpse away and trying to get his bearings.
“We transferred to five kilometers above the surface of Mercury. We are rising tangentially and decelerating under gravitational attraction.”
“The other ships?” Baker stole a glance at the corpse. Its mouth hung crooked, something black and thick draining from its throat and nose. One of its eyes had burst against the console and oozed gray. Did Lee feel that?
“They had not matched velocities to ours and would be in peril if they transferred down before adjustment. In the meantime, I have plotted a course for the cryonic preservation unit at the south pole and will land us there.”
“Land us? Are you crazy? This is a spaceship!” He struggled to his feet and grabbed for the hole in the ship’s viewing port.
“Warning-delta v.” The vernier rockets blazed, knocking Baker to the side. They cut off and he resumed his climb out to discover that the top of the fighter had wedged against the bent bulkhead, leaving only a narrow space between the two.
“I’m stuck here! Keep conning the ship. I’ll try to get to Con One or Two.”
“I had no intention of giving up. We are heading south in a forced low altitude orbit.”
“We can’t land something this big!” He snaked his arms out of the hole in the hatchway.
“The skirting on the engine array is high enough to protect the engines, the gravity is low enough, the planet has no atmosphere, we are in a hurry-I can synthesize no simpler solution.”
“Than landing it on your ass? You’ll shear the skirting and we’ll fall over!”
“In the time it took you to say that, I rechecked all the data seventy-eight times. We can do it.”
Baker ground his teeth against the mouthpiece until it squeaked like scratched slate. “All right. It’s your fuselage. I’m going to Con Two.”
His body ached from bruises and the weight of acceleration. Sliding out of the fighter, he turned around just long enough to say, “Lee-If you can still hear me-we’ll be transferring to another star after this. I don’t think you’ll want to wait around for a dozen years or more to reestablish contact with your psychfighter-we’d be long gone before your reinforcements arrived.”
The corpse twitched once, and a black slime foamed around the edges of its speaker grill.
Baker looked away, then across the bulkhead. It had bent aftward into the next compartment. He squeezed forward on his belly, wriggling back and forth to avoid a jagged piece of metal from a broken sensor array.
He’s in control, that damned machine. Doesn’t need me. He heard air escaping slowly somewhere. He placed one foot against the array and pushed forward.
“Why’re you doing all this? Why didn’t you just transfer to deep space? It would have been safer.”
The computer said nothing for a moment, during which Baker pulled through the narrowest part of the gantlet-between the fighter’s laser cannon and a portion of the bulkhead that had bent outward. When the machine spoke again, it was with a tentative tone Baker had never heard before.
“The woman Delia Trine seems to be important to both you and Virgil for some reason; vital to your continued operation of Circus. I am willing to take acceptable risks to recover her if she is still alive.”
Baker squirmed free from under the fighter and moved on his hands and knees toward an exit hatch. He stood and opened the seals. Between heavy breaths, he said, “The moment we land, Lee in there’ll call his friends out on us. Or they’ll spot us from orbit. Matching velocities isn’t necessary to hit us with Valli pellets. They’re even more deadly when moving.”
“I am depressurizing the bay to cause cell rupture in the corpse. My sensors have greater range than those of the fighters. So do my lasers. We shall be safe until the deep thrust fighter that is coming around the sun arrives.”
“What?”
“We shall be finished by then, I estimate.”
He ran the rest of the way to the Con Two lift.
The surface of Mercury whipped past them, a blur of blackness shimmering here and there under the glowing ionized gases left in the wake of Circus’s engines. Baker stared, eyes unblinking. The spacecraft maintained a bow-down attitude because of the forced orbit-were the engines to shut off, the ship would climb to a higher orbit rather than fall to the planet. The effect of constantly falling toward the world transfixed Baker. He watched the horizon, fighting the persistent feeling of disorientation. The back of his conning chair was down, the viewing port of Con Two up, and the horizon of the planet well above his head. He watched a hazy glow appear around the edge of the planet.
“Approaching south polar area. Stand by for skew flip turn and deceleration for landing.” Baker tightened his grip on the seat. The computer broke into its rapid speaking mode, commenting on all major systems function. Suddenly, the vernier rockets fired up with full force. The horizon dropped away and Baker’s stomach with it. His neck ached against the braces that held his head immobile. An instant later, the lower limb of Mercury dropped down across the port and hung there, the mountains and craters speeding over its limb out of sight.
In the brief duration of the skew flip, Circus rose to triple its former altitude. Baker noticed the extended field of vision this gave him.
Ass backward into the unknown. He switched on a rear vidcam and added sun filters until the scrim showed more than a white glare.
“I hope you know where you’re going,” he said, moving the cam controls to take in the slightly curving edge of the planet.
“Five kps, twenty km,” the computer said, followed by, “Four kps at eighteen. Under escape v. Rotate for landing.” The vernier rockets firmly turned the spacecraft aftward to the surface.
The viewing port darkened. Baker watched a zone of brilliant light flow from the bow across the ellipsoidal prow and head aftward. All of the ship lay bathed in light from the horizon facing the ship’s topside. Judging by the position of the shadows cast by the conning tower, he could estimate just where the sun should be burning more than six times brighter than on Earth, with no atmosphere to shield him.
The weight of deceleration lightened. He no longer saw the planet through the viewing port. Darkness suddenly spread across the spaceship, followed shortly by a sharp decrease in the whining of the engines.
“Engine shutdown,” the computer said calmly. The ship settled against the mercurial plain, then listed slowly to port until a vernier rocket fired to steady the mass.
“Status,” Baker said, undoing his harness.
“We are twenty kilometers away from the south pole, on the dark side of the terminator. The redoubt’s solar energy power station consists of a low ring of solar panels disguised into the outer rim of a crater. Heat exchange elements extend from the center of the ring to a radius of twenty five kilometers. Eighteen of the thirty-six heat sinks are always on the night side and radiating infra-red. The cryonic preservation unit is most likely buried at the center of the crater.”
Baker climbed down toward the lift. The computer’s voice followed him in his earphones.
“Use lifeboat four,” the computer suggested. “The port shuttle was damaged when the psychfighter shifted during the skew flip.”
“Where’s that?”
“Ring One Level Two Section Three O’Clock. Use axial tube three.”
“Right.” Baker climbed out of the lift and up to the center of the ring. He ran down the man-high axial tube. “What about the other ships?” he asked between breaths.
“Three have so far crossed the horizon in orbit. I am keeping their sensors defeated by laser until they enter my kill radius. I destroyed five ships that transferred in before they could get bearings on us. I think we have very little time, as the deep thrust fighter is in deceleration for orbit.”
“It’ll take time for the troops to get out of their acceleration baths.”
“They can outfight us with lasers, Jord.”
“They won’t, if they think they might harm me. Wait till they slow to a constant velocity, then transfer one of the anti-matter pods into their mid-section.”
The computer considered the plan for several microseconds. “At the south pole, you would have some measure of protection from heavy particles, but I should transfer it at distance so the other particles-”
“Just do it. I can take care of myself on the surface.”
“You will need a more protective suit.”
Baker looked at his thin Späflex outfit and shook his head. “I’ll fly close to the ground and keep screens up while I’m in the boat. The shadow from the crater rim should protect me while I’m looking for an entrance. There’s little enough time as it is.”
“You will be out of contact with me when you go beyond line of sight.”
“That’s a blessing, motormouth.” Baker paused, then shook his head and cycled the airlock. You can’t hurt a computer’s feelings. He switched the breathing apparatus from tanks to rebreather and climbed into the lifeboat as soon as the airlock opened.
The lifeboat was designed for use in the event of a total power failure in the larger ship. The airlock could be manually cycled or blown open. After that, nothing need be done to escape Circus Galacticus.
Baker climbed into the cockpit and dropped all twenty sun filters across the glasteel hatch. He hit full power and shot out of the ship’s hull like a bullet. He corrected for the almost immediate drop to ground level and sped across the shattered terrain, bow high, engine at an angle that rocketed him forward while compensating for Mercury’s feeble acceleration of gravity.
“Hot tail!” he cried, then whooped as he steered the craft toward the brightest part of the horizon.
“Two degrees port,” the computer suggested. Baker complied.
“You know,” he said, “I rode motorcycles back on Earth. This is just like popping a wheel-”
“You should be in view of the crater rim now. Loss of signal should occur-” the computer’s voice crackled once and fell silent.
So long.
The dark rim of the crater bent over the horizon to rush toward him. His finger flicked at the controls and the lifeboat rose a few hundred meters. Through the darkened screen he discerned the smooth solar panels and heat sinks camouflaged into the crater wall. Everything on the night side lay in darkness.
Purple light bathed the cockpit for an instant. The boat plunged down into the crater and hottailed across the surface at an altitude of less than eight meters then crossed to the other side of the south pole, dodging mounds and boulders. Braking rockets immediately flared into life, kicking dust up around the boat. The craft performed a three-bounce landing, shuddered, and came to a rest in the shadow of the dayward edge of the crater rim.
The dust settled quickly in the absence of an atmosphere and Baker opened the hatch.
The crater looked like any other crater on any other planet, except that a faint aurora shimmered every few seconds overhead. The massive flux of the solar wind provided Mercury with its own cloud of particles to ionize.
Something moved against the stars. Another psychfighter.
He watched it flare and vanish.
Good shot, Circus. He looked about, seeing nothing in the crater to indicate an entrance to the cryonic unit. He wondered where they would put an access hatch. Depends on whether they merely wanted to hide during a brief war or whether they wanted never to be found. If it’s on a time lock, it may be sealed from the inside.
He strapped a hand laser to the back of his right glove and climbed out of the cockpit. Surface dust compacted under the soles of his boots. At less than half earth weight, his steps were long and easy, but cautious. Approaching a large boulder, he chose to leap over it rather than alter his pace. A burning on his back from the top of his head to below his shoulders distracted him enough that he stumbled on landing and slid through the sandy rim of a smaller crater.
He stood and brushed the dust off. His back still felt warm. Picking up a rock, he threw it straight up with all the strength the pressure suit permitted. At four meters high it glowed brightly, then darkened as it dropped slowly back into the crater shadow.
High jumps cancelled due to sunshine, he thought. We’ll just stick to the marathon.
He walked with long steps, but refrained from any more leaps. There was still no visible evidence that the floor of the crater was anything more than a level expanse of pitted dust punctuated by a single craggy hill at the center, a feature common to many impact craters. He reached the central peak and stood before it, crouching slightly. Another stone toss indicated that the sun shone just half a meter over his head. A sharp line separated the bright upper half of the hill from the shadowed lower half. Reflected sunlight illuminated certain portions of the shaded areas, so Baker could see them when he covered his eyes from the glare of the upper half of the peak. He found that he could not even look at the upper half for more than a few seconds.
He began to sweat. Conduction’s making the ground too warm and light reflected from the crater wall adds to the heat. Excess perspiration passed through the pressure suit and evaporated swiftly in the vacuum, cooling him. The Späflex adjusted its porosity to handle the new conditions. It was not enough. He knew he would have to find shelter fast or return to the shuttle.
Baker’s gaze searched around the crater, then considered the central peak before him. At the very top, drenched in blinding light, lay something black, curled, and weblike. It reached under a small mound of dust on top. Baker followed the slope of the mound with shielded eyes. Something about the dust did not look right.
Why would a crater peak have small dust rays extending from its base? And why that pile of dust on top?
He pounded one fist lightly against his chin. He reconsidered at the charred fibers near the summit of the tiny peak. Sure. Put the main shaft under the peak, drag out a canvas sack and fill it with dirt, wrap it in Mylar until it’s set on top of the peak, pull the Mylar inside and close the hatch. The canvas bag burns, bursts, and you’re covered.
He examined every square centimeter he could see without stepping out of his protective shade. He caught sight of something just above the shadow line-a soft rectangular bump that seemed too regular. He flung rocks at it until one hit above it. Dust tumbled away from an airlock handle in small-scale avalanches.
Straight. Now I hope I don’t need some code to unlock it.
He bent down to approach the base of the mound. Digging his boots into the ever-hotter sands, he worked his way up to the very edge of darkness. Crouching there, he squinted to see the exposed handle. Sunlight glinted dazzlingly on the upper edge of the polished metal.
Doesn’t appear locked. Here goes one hand. He reached up with his right hand, stopped before it crossed into sunlight, and lowered it. Better not risk the shooting hand. He quickly grabbed the handle with his left hand and yanked.
The Späflex did not burn. After only an instant of insulation, it efficiently transferred the heat directly to his palm and fingers. The hatch opened and Baker fell back to the hot sands, screeching. The sand and dust from the door sprinkled down upon him. He rolled clear, but some of it smothered his legs, burning like cinders. He leapt up to stamp off the dust. It sizzled on the sweat-soaked Späflex.
He grunted more in fury than pain, breathed lightly for a few moments, then looked up at the hatch. A shaft of sunlight entered through the opening, heating and boiling away the atmosphere that had condensed inside years before.
He climbed back to the barely man-sized hole and looked up toward it. Sets of instructions in several languages had been printed on the inside of the door.
Have to get inside to read them. Now how do I get inside without roasting? Wait until the planet makes a half-turn?
He touched the back of his shoulders. It no longer hurt. Not much of a burn. Maybe I can last as long as a second or two if I keep moving.
He dug his feet into the side of the mound, reached up and grabbed the bottom of the hatchway. Pulling and kicking, he wormed his way inside the compartment. A rounded square of light on the opposite wall blistered paint where it fell. Baker watched it for a moment, then considered closing the hatch.
His entire back hurt. He realized that both of his hands were now burnt when he tried to unclench them.
“God damn it!” He stood up, avoiding the deadly sunbeam, reached outside with his left hand, and drew the hatch shut. The clang reverberated through the floorplates. He sat down and drew his knees up, curling his hands into his crotch.
I’ve got no time to sit here and hurt, damn it. What do I have to do next?
A soft light shone from the top of the two-meter wide cylinder. Its ruddy glow revealed the square, blackened patch where sunlight had hit. Baker looked up at the hatch. The lettering on the inside had charred, but the letters showed up as black against a lighter gray. Baker stood to read the Americ version. The directions for operating the lift were simple enough. He opened the control box near the hatch and pulled the correct switches.
The lift rumbled once, then whined into life. The floorplate descended slowly, stalling intermittently like an old man walking down stairs.
Faster, damn you! He scuffed one boot and then the other against the floor. The top of a hatch appeared in one portion of the wall. He bent down to watch the floor drop past it. Before the lift even stopped moving, he had opened the control box and actuated the cycling switch.
Inside the airlock, he removed the clear protective cap on the exit optics of his glove laser. He squeezed his thumb against the switch alongside his index finger. The low-wattage sighting beam threw a red dot on the wall opposite him. It wavered nervously.
The hatch sealed by itself and the airlock cycled. A light shone green. Baker steadied his hand and pointed it at the opening hatch.
All right. Let’s see what sort of greeting you people planned to give visitors.
The hatch swung silently open. A cold mist poured across the floor, chilling Baker’s ankles. He saw nothing. His arm ached from the tension of suspense.
The Späflex contracted against his skin, compensating for his sudden chill. The suit, manufactured to function in the perfect insulation of a vacuum, could not protect him from the cold atmosphere. Heaters throbbed into life someplace, struggling to replace a half century of slow heat loss.
He noticed more instructions on the wall. He pressed the button labeled AMERIC and switched on his outer microphone.
“Welcome to Pastime,” a woman’s pleasant voice said. The still-frigid loudspeakers distorted some of the lower frequency sounds. “Please be very careful when in the main chamber, as cryonic liquids are present and could cause damage if allowed to escape. All units are arranged alphabetically, but please realize that some people may have used assumed names.”
Baker switched on the outside speakers of his suit. “Are you a computer or just a recording?” he asked.
No answer. He strode down the black, indirectly lit corridor until he saw a sign reading MAIN CHAMBER in a number of alphabets. He worked the lock according to printed instructions and stood back. Another blast of cold hit him. Shuddering, he waited for the heaters to warm the enclosure.
Come on, come on. Why’d this suit have to conduct heat so efficiently? I can see them in there, unprotected but for their glasteel coffins. Not even a robot guard.
“You are entering the Pastime main chamber. Please do not touch any controls until instructed. All five hundred seventeen occupants of Pastime are civilians possessing no military secrets.”
Here comes the spiel, Baker thought.
“Pastime was built,” the recording continued as Baker walked quickly to the “T” section, “to house a group of people opposed to the Earth-Belt war of Twenty-One Fifteen. We await the opening of a sealed memory in the banks of the Star Consolidated Auditing Firm, notifying independent rescue agencies of our location. This will take place on Twenty-One June, Twenty-One Forty-Five. If you are from any of the following rescue agencies…” the recording ran through a list of fifteen companies. Baker shook his head in pity and looked around for Delia’s unit. The main chamber took up a lot of space. Unlike the cold holds on habitat ships, this place did not have to keep its mass or energy usage low. The cryonic units were efficient, well built, and large.
Baker located the gold-anodized aluminum plate marked “TRINE, Delia Diana,” listing her birth date and the address of her next of kin. The computer finished its list and said, “…then you are welcomed and we hope the war has ended. If you are a wayfarer who stumbled upon us, we welcome you and ask that you not disturb us if the war is still in progress. If you have come here from a military expedition, we assume there is some reason you did not merely destroy us from orbit.
“Please remember that we are civilians posing no military threat. We are to be considered Non-Combatant Escapees in accordance with New Geneva Convention Section Twelve, Sub-Sections Beta through Gamma. Thank you for your cooperation.”
There was no wake up call. They’ll be here forever.
He ran his hands over the three-meter-long capsule. Delia lay inside somewhere, floating in liquid helium and wrapped in thousands of layers of insulation per centimeter of the cylinder shell’s half-meter thickness.
The plaque explained resuscitation instructions. He read through them, then pounded the side of the capsule.
“I can’t stay here two days! Dee-how do I get you out?” No time! If Lee’s launched a Valli attack from Trans-Pluto, it’ll be here in a few more hours. I can’t carry the whole damn capsule back to the boat. And the deep-thrust battleship is nearly here! Good God.
He ran past the rows of capsules to the opposite end of the chamber. A small console extended from the shiny black wall to his right. Anxiety and the biting cold made his stomach muscles ache. He ignored the pain and leaned over the board.
Where’s the damn’ curator robot?
He punched the button with a question mark on it and typed in:
ARE CRYONIC UNITS REMOVABLE?
YES, blinked the reply.
How to get it out, though? How’d they get out if the rescue people didn’t show? There’s got to be an emergency contingency-
LOCATION OF LIFEBOATS?
PLEASE CLARIFY
ESCAPE SPACECRAFT?
SECTIONS 3, 6, 9 amp; 12-PERIMETER 4.
HEAVY LOAD LIFTING EQUIPMENT?
NONE.
What? How do they-
HOW TO MOVE CRYONIC UNIT FROM MAIN CHAMBER TO ESCAPE SPACECRAFT?
MAGNEPLANE GUIDEWAY-ORANGE LINES
Baker released a breath of pent agitation and fear. The console waited a few seconds, then shut off. He ran back to Delia’s capsule. The exertion warmed him.
An hour. A whole damn’ hour. Circus could be slag by now. And I’m not even loaded.
The cryonic unit slid down the corridor, floating several millimeters above the orange line painted along the center of the magnetized floor. Baker sat atop the capsule, watching the lackluster scenery pass.
Following Baker’s directions, the cryo-capsule, its massive tangle of peripheral equipment, and the superconducting sheet upon which it rested, moved quickly along the guideway on Meisner-effect fields. It slowed and turned, then regained speed.
A double set of doors slid open and the cryonic unit levitated into the shipping dock. Jumping off, Baker ran to the escape ship and looked inside. He took less than a second to decide that the fates were against him. He sat down against the bulk of the cryonic unit.
No cargo space. Just acceleration couches and two engines. What else could go wrong?
A telltale ticked frantically in his ear. His shoulders drooped.
Impurity overload in the rebreather accumulators. Now I’m going to suffocate. Circus’s probably gone from orbit again, one way or another, and the psychfighters are after me. I might as well take one of those engines and use it to defrost Dee, for all the good it’d do either of us.
He looked at the twin engine pods on the twenty-meter long wedge-shaped ship and breathed the thick recycled air. I’m sorry, Dee. I got you this far and now I’ve got to put you back before your batteries run out. I should’ve died back there…
His hands slipped from his thighs to the magneplate. The twin engine pods in his field of vision twisted and blurred.
Something hiccoughed in his breathing tube.
I didn’t get you back, did I Delia? Sorry. Sorry. I should have loved you more when I had the chance.
The pods came back into focus. His forehead burned.
A chance.
A buzzer sounded far away in his earpiece, then grew louder, closer, until it shook him to awareness.
Twenty minutes!
He scrambled to leap off the cargo carrier. The emergency oxygen bottle that cut in to revive him would probably not even last that long.
The port engine pod rattled open under the force of his frantic efforts. He ripped at loose cables and unscrewed fuel fittings. Why do I keep using these chances to live?
He climbed into the cockpit of the ship and actuated the systems dump. A light flashed the words “Emergency Engine Jettison.” A warning siren wailed noiselessly in the vacuum, and with a floor-shaking thump, the port engine dropped from its housing.
I’m an ass. I’ll probably be shot at or Vallied the minute I come out the chute, or I won’t be able to hottail it sideways.
He pushed the cryonic unit to the end of the magneplane guideway and left it hovering. He tried not to hyperventilate.
C’mon, there’s got to be a crane or something around here. The engine housing’s big enough to hold the blasted thing, but how do I get the engine out of the way and the-
A vernier rocket stared him in the face. His gaze darted to the low rail on which the escape rocket rested.
Don’t stop to think about it.
He jumped into the cockpit and charged the engines.
Do it now!
The vernier rocket on the starboard side fired, sliding the boat sideways off the track. He laughed and hit the braking rocket. A short impulse shoved the fuselage a few meters backward. He looked behind him and fired the vernier very lightly a couple more times.
Close enough.
The empty port engine pod hung over the cryonic unit. Pieces of the guide rail lay scattered across the floor. He ran back to the unit, powered up the magneplane, and eased the load into the engine housing. With it levitating inside, he closed the pod hatches and locked them.
Finally.
The lifeboat checklist took a minute to run through. The air in his mouthpiece again started to taste stale. The launch ramp doors parted, a star-filled sky appearing ahead of him. He alerted the onboard computer to compensate for the single engine and the different mass of the cryonic unit.
The kick of the starboard engine slammed him back in his seat. He cleared the exit hatch and hottailed across the plain, the rim of the crater nearly a kilometer behind him. When the last liter of oxygen whispered into his lungs, he fought the urge to suck in as much air as he could and held his breath with grim force.
With one free finger he started cycling the air inside the cabin. The pressure rose. With every bit of his concentration centered on holding the boat safely on attitude, he had no chance to unfasten his helmet.
“Circus,” he said with his last exhalation, “this is Baker. Stand by to receive payload.”
Circus’s touchdown area appeared over the short horizon. He stared at the smooth circle of molten rock.
Overhead, in synchronous orbit, hung a score of psychfighters. Baker watched six of the tiny blips vanish from his radar scrim and reappear directly around him. No battleship, though. The anti-matter pod worked. Where is Circus?
He hit the braking rocket and slowed the lifeboat to a gentle landing on the dusty crater floor. The psychfighters landed around him in a threatening circle. Something exploded aft of him and in the control panels.
Vallis!
He reached up to wrestle with his breather. Numb fingers, unable to grasp, fell to his sides.
Swimming in air. And I can’t get to it.
One of the psychfighters hovered over the escape ship, descending. The black of space blurred over Baker’s entire field of vision, his last impressions those of the fighter still a dozen meters overhead and of a clanking sound shaking the boat. He took a last, useless breath.
Going can be so soft. Gentle tugging into black, like an insistent lover urging, drawing, pulling me to that dark bed…